"It's like this: you wake and watch TV, get in your car and listen to the radio you go to your little jobs or little school, but you don't hear about that on the 6 o'clock news, why? 'Cause nothing is happening, and you go home and watch some more TV and maybe it's a fun night and you go out and watch a movie. I mean it's got so bad that half the people on TV, inside the TV, they're watching TV.

And what are these people watching? People like me."

This winter break seems to be very movie filled for me this time. Today I watched We Need To Talk About Kevin after reading the book a couple of time and ah, I guess it was a guaranteed success with someone like Ezra Miller as Kevin. There couldn't have possibly been a better cast and that's definitely the first box checked for this movie.

For me, when it comes to movies, I never actually properly review them. I don't comment on the coherence of the movie as a whole or the comparison between the book and the movie adaptation. It's always just the thoughts those movies tend to storm up in my head that I feel the need to address. Sometimes the way they're presented in movies or books makes them a lot more manageable because in the process of attempting to analyse them in the movie's concept, I come to terms with my own thoughts in response and how that's relevant to me and where the relevance stems from.

When it comes to this book/movie/story, Kevin excites me so much, I don't even quite know why. I find it a little strange that I feel so much empathy and connection with the psychopath. Actually, no, I'm supposed to feel uncomfortable with the fact that I have so much empathy and connection with Kevin but I don't and maybe that worried me a little and compelled me to add that in, just to be on the safe side of things. There are norms set for everything and everyone and the fact that Kevin is everything above and beyond those norm boundaries makes the viewer uncomfortable. He's so goddamn charming and if he was considered "normal", the audience know they would've been fond of him. And I think we're naturally uncomfortable with the concept that we might understand some of the motives of a psychopath who is willingly torturing his mother in every possible way he could, and that - supposedly - 'should' scare us. But it doesn't scare me. And that's exciting.

Kevin's approach to what the people are interested in nowadays and how the media is only willing to depict the stories of the sick and the crazy. Nobody wants to watch a movie about little Timmy who gets straight As and spends his free time watching TV, because that's too common and frankly, that's not entertainment. And I'm guilty of being one of the people who are very much interested in that sick side of the world - as a matter of fact, it's more the sick side of everything. There's just more to look into when it comes to the dark side, there's so much that can scare you, intimidate you, disgust you, and that's an experience all in itself.

The fact that Kevin mentions this makes me think of Augustus Waters (from TFioS) and how obsessed he was with oblivion; the state of being forgotten. And it seems like Kevin's master plan all stems from the fact that he has always craved attention. In fact, he was born right into the state of needing it so badly and not getting enough of it at all. So when his mother asks him why he did it and he responds saying that at first, he thought he knew why but recently he's not so sure, it makes me think of how he was so obsessed with attention and set a target for himself that just completely took over and made him very obsessive. He portrayed so many obsessive tendencies and all the messed up things he does only seem to thrill me even more.

In relation to the whole oblivion and attention thing, his mum asks him about how school's going and he responds with: "It's going."

And that's just so true. It is insanely true. That is all I could ever say about school. It's happening and it's moving forward and we're studying and taking all those shitty standardized tests and repeat that over and over for a few years. Education is a whole other sector of discussion for me because I have so much to say about it, but I think this was one of the things that made Kevin - personally - very relatable to me. I understood where his obsessiveness came from and I almost wanted to say "Ah, I know right." It's so repetitive and dull and there's no escaping it. You don't even have to enjoy it, because it's happening wether you like it or not. And of course when it comes to school, it's a privilege and people who are getting a good education, or simply some form of education at all, should be very grateful for it. But it's compulsory and with everything that you have to do regardless of how you feel about it, is something you learn to get used to.

"Just because you're used to something doesn't mean you like it. You're used to me."

That last sentence hit me quite a lot because little Kevin in the movie said it with such fragility. Even whilst he was being completely hateful towards his mother, he was aware of how she felt towards him. He knew what was happening. And just like Ezra said in one of his interviews for the movie, a young child or baby is very much aware of its surrounding and will ask for the attention and care it craves and needs in order to grow and I like that this movie shows just how delicate and important caring for a child the correct way is and just how easy it is to go wrong.

"You don't look happy."
"Have I ever"